Jan Tschichold’s letterhead, 1956

Source: http://www.flickr.com. Uploaded to Flickr by Florian Hardwig and tagged with “alteschwabacher”. License: All Rights Reserved.

I was surprised to see that in the mid-1950s, Jan Tschichold used Alte Schwabacher as the typeface for his personal letterhead. This letter from October 1956 is addressed to Rudolf Hostettler. The year before, Tschichold moved back to Basel to work for Hoffmann-La Roche.

It is not the cut by Benjamin Krebs Nachfahren — the figures don’t match. None of the digitally available Alte Schwabachers is a match either. The only digital versions with old-style figures are IHOF’s distressed SchwarzKopf and RMU’s Schwabacher, but they are very different.